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Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Panini's Coup

A couple of weeks ago it
was announced that Topps was unretiring the #7 for their checklists and that
the contract with the Mantle family has ended. Yesterday it was announced that
Panini has signed a multi-year contract with the Mantle family and will be producing
Mantle cards including cut signatures and memorabilia cards. The agreement is
that Mantle will appear in six Panini releases a year plus he can appear on
packaging materials for two releases a year.

Mickey’s sons David and
Danny said that the reason for the change was that they felt that Topps was flooding
the market with their father in modern day releases. Obviously, this is code
talk for “Panini offered us more money” because Panini will flood the market
too. Just because his likeness can only be included in six releases does not
mean that he will only be included on a couple of cards. Being in six releases
will most likely result in hundreds of Mantle cards a year from Panini for the
next couple of years and the worst of it all is that without the MLB license
Mantle will appear logoless. I expect we will see tie and golf shirt relic
cards.

His first Panini card is
part of the online exclusive Panini Eternal release, seen above, and became available
yesterday beginning at $9.99 each. His first packed out card will be in 2017 Panini Immaculate Baseball
in August.

About Me

I started collecting as a kid but by the time I hit my teens my interests were elsewhere. I returned to the hobby in 1992, just in time to see the junk wax era go in to full swing. My collecting interests have changed over the past 25 years and I prefer to focus on just a couple of players.

My collection is very specific now because I want to keep it controlled and organized, I now focus mainly on my Ken Griffey Jr. & Jay Buhner collections.